Rural China in ruins: The rush to urbanize China's countryside is opening a moral battleground (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

China has officially become a predominantly urban country, with over 50% of the population now registered as urban residents. Its urbanization process has been described as the most managed in human history. The Chinese government manages the building of new cities, regulates the housing of displaced people and controls squatters. As an historically poorer area, the west of China has been the target of ongoing efforts at infrastructural development. Describing urbanization as managed however masks the conflicts and contradictions involved in a process which is far from smooth. Although villagers are usually seen to be largely the powerless victims of these initiatives, it is clear that many try to take advantage of the situation, while others are unable to do so. Based on recent fieldwork and eight years of visits to one village undergoing urbanization, this article looks at the complex dynamics involved and at the moral battleground which they lay bare.     

The art of nationalism: Artists' perspectives on the Latvian Centenary film programme

In the aftermath of several decades of neoliberalism in Eastern Europe, the social fabric of post-socialist societies is frayed. In this context, nationalist cultural policies and everyday displays of national belonging have emerged as key instruments of social solidarity. There has recently been a drive of state initiatives in Latvia in the field of cultural policy aimed at strengthening national identity. In this paper, we focus our attention on one particular cultural policy initiative, Latvian Films for Latvian Centenary. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 16 film directors who participated in the Centenary film programme, the paper explores how artists and cultural operators involved in this programme are mobilised as national(ist) subjects and how they see their work within such a framework. We argue that nationalist cultural policy can be successfully implemented because the artists, themselves formed as responsible political and moral subjects in the tradition of Latvian cultural nationalism, share a regard for culture and the arts as a resource for sustaining the political statehood and the national community. However, the artists also recognise the limitations of their work as a source of social cohesion and solidarity in a society that is ethnically divided.     

Reviews

Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran Under the Shah and Khomeini , Houchang E. Chehabi, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990, xiv + 342 pp.

Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition , Michael M. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990, xxxvi + 564 pp., cloth $49.75, paper $23.50.

Gnoseologiia sufizma , A. Mukhammedkhodzhaev, Dushanbe: Donish, 1990, 112 pp., 1.50 rubles.

Liberal Nationalism in Iran: The Failure of a Movement , Sussan Siavoshi, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990, 196 pp., bibliography and index to p. 214, $24.50.

The Iranian Revolution: Its Global Impact , ed. John L. Esposito, Miami: Florida International University Press, 1990, viii + 346 pp.

Iran and the World: Continuity in a Revolutionary Decade , Shireen T. Hunter, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990, pp. 254, $35.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Miniature Painting in Ottoman Baghdad , Rachel Milstein, Islamic Art and Architecture No. 5., Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda publishers, 1990, 132 pp., 16 color plates, b & w illus., drawings, index, bibliography, no price listed.

The Great Mosque of Isfahan , Oleg Grabar, London: I. B. Tauris and Company Ltd., 1990, 156 pp., £24.95.

The State, Bureaucracy, and Revolution in Iran: Agrarian Reform and Politics , Ali Farazmand, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1989, 289 pp., $41.85.

Acta Iranica: Encyclopédie permanente des études iraniennes 30, Iranica Varia: Papers In Honor of Professor Ehsan Yarshater , ed. D. Amin, M. Kashef, and A. S. Shahbazi, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990, xxxii + 291 pp., with maps and photographs.

Women of Deh Koh: Lives in an Iranian Village , Erika Friedl, Washington and London: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1989, 237 pp., no bibliography or index.

Le Discours populaire de la révolution iranienne (2 volumes), Paul Vieille and Farhad Khosrokhavar, Paris: Contemporanéité, 1990, 275 pp.

Iranian Drama, an Anthology , trans. from Persian, comp. and ed. M. R. Ghanoonparvar and John Green, Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1989, xxix + 302 pp., $24.95.

Labor Transfer and Economic Development: Theoretical Perspectives and Case Studies from Iran , Hassan Hakimian, Herefordshire, England: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990, pp. xii + 206, $60.00.

Iranian Jewry During the Afghan Invasion: The Kitab‐i Sar Guzasht of Babai b. Farhad — Text Edition and Commentary , Vera B. Moreen, Freiburger Islamstudien, Band XIV, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990, x + 178 pp.

Persian Literature , ed. Ehsan Yarshater, Columbia Lectures on Iranian Studies, no. 3, New York: The Persian Heritage Foundation; Bibliotheca Persica, 1988, xi + 562 pp.

Oil, State and Industrialization in Iran , Massoud Karshenas, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. xviii + 308.

On Islam and Shi'ism , Ahmad Kasravi, trans. M. R. Ghanoonparvar, intro. and ed. M. A. Jazayery, Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1990, paper $14.95.

Neither East Nor West: Iran, the Soviet Union, and the United States , ed. Nikki R. Keddie and Mark J. Gasiorowski, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990, ix + 295 pp.     

Mining sick: Creatively unsettling normative narratives about industry,environment, extraction,and the health geographies of rural,remote, northern,and Indigenous communities in British Columbia

Rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous communities on Turtle Island are routinely—as Cree Elder Willie Ermine says—pathologized. Social science and health scholarship, including scholarship by geographers, often constructs Indigenous human and physical geographies as unhealthy, diseased, vulnerable, and undergoing extraction. These constructions are not inaccurate: peoples and places beyond urban metropoles on Turtle Island live with higher burdens of poor health; Indigenous peoples face systemic violence and racism in colonial landscapes; rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous geographies are sites of industrial incursions; and many rural and remote geographies remain challenging for diverse Indigenous peoples. What, however, are the consequences of imagining and constructing people and places as “sick”? Constructions of “sick” geographies fulfill and extend settler (often European white) colonial narratives about othered geographies. Rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous geographies are discursively “mined” for narratives of sickness. This mining upholds a sense of health and wellness in southern, urban, Euro‐white‐settler imaginations. Drawing from multi‐year, relationship‐based, cross‐disciplinary qualitative community‐informed experiences, and anchored in feminist, anti‐colonial, and anti‐racist methodologies that guided creative and humanities‐informed stories, this paper concludes with different stories. It unsettles settler‐colonial powers reliant on constructing narratives about sickness in others and consequently reframes conversations about Indigenous well‐being and the environment.